Weymouth: You said recently ““Why should I apologize? I’m very proud of my heritage.’’ Did you mean your Jewish heritage?
Albright: All my heritage. I have been very proud of who I am and the values that my parents taught me and as I now find out more about my heritage, obviously I’m very proud of it.
When did you learn about your Jewish heritage? Did something strike you that you thought was conclusive?
After I got my U.N. job I started getting lots of letters. Some letters were from people who would say, ““I knew your family.’’ Some were vague and didn’t jibe at all. Very rarely did I get a letter where all the facts made sense. This fall when there was speculation about me becoming Secretary of State, I got more information that made me think that my family was of Jewish background. After I was nominated, the number of letters really increased. I got a letter that was more specific in terms of the dates, and things made sense.
It was a letter from whom?
I don’t even know. In retrospect, I sure wish that I had done something about it then, but I was in the middle of working 20 hours a day, and secondly, I hope people will appreciate this, this news doesn’t just affect me. I have three grown daughters who are married and two of them have children. I thought that the right way to do this would be to check it out and then have a family discussion.
You’re an expert on central Europe. You’re a historian. How could you not have known your grandparents were Jewish?
Here, again, hindsight clarifies everything. It’s a little bit like seeing a lot of dots on a piece of paper and when you finally draw the lines you’ve got a picture. But if you’re not looking for a picture, then you don’t see it. I was very interested in my background, the role of my parents as participants in the Czech political story. The experience that I grew up with was communism and how much my father had done to combat it. My historical curiosity was primarily directed at that. There were no holes in my family’s story. My parents talked a lot about how they met, about what life was like in the ’20s and ’30s in Prague, and about historical figures they knew. They talked about their experience in Yugoslavia before the war. There never was a lack of facts. There were never embarrassed silences or anything that would have given me a hint.
Did your parents explain to you what happened to your grandparents?
They didn’t. I was 2 when I left Prague. I had apparently spent some time with my grandmother, but I do not remember her. I didn’t know the concept of grandparents. I lived pretty much of an isolated life. We had spent time in London and then we went back to Prague for three or four months. Then we went to Belgrade, where I lived with my parents in the embassy. I didn’t go to school. I had a governess. At some point I learned that my grandparents had died during the war. That seemed a perfectly logical answer. If you’re 8 years old and you are told that your grandparents died and you think of grandparents as being old people then you don’t question it.
Some have questioned your story because of your interest in the area and because you’ve been pictured as a child of Munich. Didn’t you go to Prague three times when you were U.N. ambassador?
I did and I spent time talking to people about the communist period. I spent a lot of time with dissidents. That was my interest. I had felt always in coming to America that my life and my parents’ life was a reflection of the turbulence of the 20th century. I grew up with this incredible sense of wanting to be an American and being proud of the fact that I had come here and been accepted as an American. I had this feeling that there but for the grace of God, we might have been dead. My father had been a diplomat and people were arrested as a result of knowing him. I’d heard news that he had been declared a traitor. Now, my God, knowing what I know now, I certainly would have been dead. So if I already was grateful for my American life, I am now doubly grateful.
Your first cousin Dagmar Simova told The Washington Post that she had tried to give you this information. Did she try to contact you?
First of all, I saw her when I went back, probably in 1991. When [Washington Post reporter] Michael Dobbs contacted me and said he was doing a story about my background, I welcomed it. I gave him the names of people in Belgrade and told him about my cousin. I had nothing to hide. I’ve now been quoted as saying that I was surprised at what he later told me. I was not surprised about my Jewish origin. What I was surprised about was that my grandparents died in concentration camps.
Six million European Jews perished in World War II. Those who lived made incredible efforts to get in touch with other survivors. Did your parents make any effort to find out what happened to the people in the town they came from?
I have no idea. My parents did not discuss this with me. I was very close to them but since they didn’t tell me about their Jewish background, I have no idea whether they tried to find anything out.
Did it occur to you that your father’s name was not a traditional Czech name?
No, as a matter of fact, I was told that Korbel was an archaic word for a Czech drinking cup, a wooden kind of cup.
Have your brother and sister been to the Czech Republic this week?
I asked them to go to Prague to look up my cousin and to go to the towns where my parents were born. Interestingly enough, my brother had been to my father’s hometown in the early ’90s and he asked a lot of questions. Nobody said one word to him and his name is John Korbel. [Albright’s father was named Josef Korbel.]
Why do you think your parents did not tell you about their past?
My parents did everything in their power to make a good life for their children. They were very protective of us. We all were together all the time. Family solidarity was what my father used to talk about. What they gave us children was the gift of life, literally. Twice, once by giving us birth and the other by bringing us to America to escape what, clearly now, would have been a certain death. So I am not going to question their motives. And I repeat, I’m desperately sorry for my grandparents. I have been desperately sorry for victims of the Holocaust since I’ve been a conscious human being. But now that it’s part of my story, it has even deeper meaning. I have given many speeches saying ““Never again.’’ I care about issues of genocide and persecution. I care because of the way I was brought up by my parents. I think that it’s unfair for people who didn’t know them to judge them.
I have been and am very proud to be an American. I want the American people to be proud of the job I do as Secretary of State. I know that this is a story that interests people, but I want to get down to work and have my personal life be personal. I have been proud of the heritage that I have known about and I will be equally proud of the heritage that I have just been given.
